When we started off with Global GameJam Hull we were very worried that nobody would turn up. Every meeting ended with an anxious discussion focused on “Bums on Seats”. As you can see above, we ended up with plenty of folks, which was great. The competition started with a couple of excellent videos setting the scene (and reminding everyone about the power of deodorant) and then we got the theme. No pictures, no words. Just the sound of a human heartbeat. Genius.

Then it was off to form teams and get cracking. I ended up in a team with two David’s and a Simon. We named ourselves “The Simon Grey Glee Club” and started casting around for ideas. During the discussion I mentioned that I happened to have a Gadgeteer Heart Rate Interface, although I’d lent it to James to do some Imagine Cup stuff. Could we make a game which made use of the heart rate of the player? The answer was yes, so I was instantly on the phone to James who was kind enough to swing by and drop off the hardware and his sample code.

By the end of the evening I’d got the interface working and verified that we could get heart beats and pulse rates from it. Tomorrow I’ll make an interface to get those values into the game. I’m not working overnight on this, but I will be there really early in the morning.

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Rob Miles is technology author and educator who spent many years as a lecturer in Computer Science at the University of Hull. He is also a Microsoft Developer Technologies MVP. He is into technology, teaching and photography. He is the author of the World Famous C# Yellow Book and almost as handsome as he thinks he is.